Interview: Speaking with Jyanome, Author of Twilight Out of Focus - Part 1
7/1 Update: Now is your chance to win a one-of-a-kind shikishi board signed by series author Jyanome! See the official contest page for details.
Hurry, the contest ends on July 18th!
Earlier this year, Jyanome—the author and ultimate director of the cinematic BL series Twilight Out of Focus—sat down with Kodansha USA Publishing series editor Alexandra McCullough-Garcia to talk about the manga artist's creative journey and the world of the Midorigaoka High School Film Club.
Now, to celebrate the world premiere of the Twilight Out of Focus Box Set, we’re offering fans a special behind-the-scenes peek into their chat!
In this first of two parts, they discuss Jyanome’s path to becoming a professional manga author, her first brush with BL, the making of the Twilight Out of Focus series, and more!
Check out part two of our in-depth interview with Jyanome here:
Interview: Speaking with Jyanome, Author of Twilight Out of Focus - Part 2
This interview has been translated and edited for clarity and length.
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From Sketches to Serialization: Jyanome's Path to Manga
Editor: Could you tell us how you first got into making manga?
Jyanome: Yes, of course. I first started drawing manga in elementary school. There was a four-panel comic contest every summer and winter break, and I sort of entered on a whim. That was how I first learned to break manga up into panels. My entry was a gag comic, with the last panel being a punchline. I think I was in first grade.
Editor: So did you just keep drawing manga after that?
Jyanome: Not continuously, but I liked to draw as a hobby, so I did draw illustrations and manga and things pretty regularly. I joined a band in high school, though, so I didn’t do much drawing then at all.
Editor: How did you then decide to get into manga professionally?
Jyanome: Well, I never actually did. All I really did was decide to share some things online. At the time, it was a popular thing to do, to share your art on some sites, so I thought I’d try that. After a while, I got an offer to compile my work into an entry for a magazine, and that’s how I made my debut.
Even then, I didn’t really feel like I’d “become a manga artist.” At all. I just felt like this would be a cool memento. But then another magazine called LYNX got in touch and asked if I would like to start a serialization with them. That’s when I first felt like, “Oh, I guess I’m a manga artist now.”
So yeah, I never actually set out to become a professional manga artist. I’ve mentioned this in other interviews before, but the truth is it was never my goal to become a professional artist. It just kind of happened, which I think is sort of embarrassing.
A Lifelong Love:
Discovering and Embracing BL
Editor: Not at all! Then, how did you get into drawing BL manga?
Jyanome: Well, I just really love BL. People often ask me this question, and that is definitely part of it. But it occurs to me now that another part is that I didn’t think anybody would read my manga unless it was BL. Back when I was doing a lot of dojinshi [amateur fan-fic manga], I was told that people only wanted to read BL stories. That was sort of the feeling you got doing fan-fiction-type work back then. It was just sort of understood among fan-fiction authors that BL was the thing to do. So I think that influenced me, too. That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t as if I set out to become a professional BL manga author. I just thought, if I’m going to draw a manga, I’d like it to be a BL about these two characters, and that’s what I started posting online. I wonder if that’s actually answered your question. (lol)
Editor: Of course!
Jyanome: So, yeah. That’s how I got my start in BL. I think the best way to explain it is that BL is what I loved.
Editor: Have you always been a fan of BL? Do you remember the first BL work you read?
Jyanome: Yes. The first BL I read was an anthology spin-off of Captain Tsubasa. I was in eighth grade, and I borrowed it from a friend who was like, “Check this out.” And it was a clear-cut BL anthology, a little on the extreme side. After that, I started seeing BL in other places, and realizing that those stories showed up in professional magazines, too.
I’m trying to think of specific titles. For example, I totally labeled Mari and Shingo a BL in my mind, even if it’s not officially. Or manga like Slam Dunk, too. My head canon is that it’s BL. (lol) Even though it’s very explicitly platonic love, I couldn’t help but feel that it was a BL story.
There’s a manga called The B. B. B. by Akisato Wakuni-sensei and in that one, there is a boy who comes out and says explicitly that he likes another boy. I think it’s the first manga where that happened. You should check it out if you’re curious.
Maybe it’s better to say that that was the first manga that I read where a boy character talks about how he only likes other boys, in terms of both romantic and physical attraction. It was only later on that I read older manga like Mari and Shingo that had been popular a generation before me, so The B. B. B. is probably the first time I read a manga with a boy character who clearly says he likes another boy.
Editor: And what did you think? What was your reaction to your first boys’ love story?
Jyanome: I was like, “Oooh! Oh my god!” I was just over the moon. Like, this is amazing! (lol)
I couldn’t believe something so awesome existed. How do I put it? This may sound a little try-hard, but more than anything I felt like I’d found something that was perfect for me. It was just so much fun to read.
Pretty soon after, one of my friends suggested I try drawing some BL, and I was like, “Okay, let’s all write something together.” That friend got really into it really quickly, and even wanted to start making dojinshi—as a junior high schooler. She was so gung-ho about it. But making dojinshi is pretty expensive, so it’s kind of an adult hobby for a middle schooler. It wasn’t exactly feasible at the time, but we decided to all start writing together and talked about how we’d love to make our scribbles into a book at some point. So, we pretty quickly and naturally formed this BL fan group. But then, that friend of mine who was extra passionate about BL, who started reading it much sooner than I did—probably first in elementary school if she was that into it by eighth grade—by the end of ninth grade, that friend declared she’d gotten bored of BL and didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Editor: Wow, that was quick!
Jyanome: I know! She sort of left me behind, and I was the one who never stopped liking it. (lol)
Editor: What do you think it is about BL that makes it so appealing ?
Jyanome: I wonder. That’s kind of a difficult question, but basically I think it’s just lovely, seeing a boy I think is lovely fall for another boy and have a lovely romance—it’s all just so nice. I still read a lot of BL to this day, and it’s kind of, like, just jam-packed with things I like. It’s just really exciting.
But that’s not to say that I think romances between a boy and a girl or between girls are in any way less than. It’s just that BL is what suits me best. It’s what makes my heart flutter.
I think a lot of BL fans think about this a lot, and question why they like BL so much, but honestly, at this point I don’t think the why of it matters much at all. I think if you like something, you like it—simple as that.
You know, when I was still a teenager, I used to think that I should probably give up on BL by the time I turned twenty [the age of adulthood in Japan].
Editor: What? Really?
Jyanome: Yes, seriously! I thought it was one of those things you just had to leave behind once you became an adult. I think that’s common among otaku. When you’re younger, it feels like there’s a limit to how long you can keep doing certain things. Like, once I turn this many years old, or once I start working I’ll have to stop this or that hobby, or whatever. My friends and I used to talk about that. And one of those things we thought we’d have to leave behind was BL. I had this feeling deep down that it was a hobby I’d have to grow out of, one I could only pursue in my youth.
But now that I’ve come this far with it, I think I’ll just keep liking it forever. (lol) It feels weird to keep looking so hard for the reason. The fact is that I love it. I love writing it, I love reading it—I just love it.
Honestly, I think I’m a pretty hardcore BL fan, as in my love for this genre is greater than most. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t lose out to anybody there. (lol)
How do I put it… It’s something I want more and more people to fall in love with, too. I have this urge to be like, “It’s so much fun! You should read it!”
Lights, Camera, Characters!
Behind the Scenes of
Twilight Out of Focus
Editor: I love that! People should read it! Switching over toTwilight Out of Focus, can you tell us how that story came about?
Jyanome: Well, it all started when I was brainstorming with my editor about what sort of serialization we should do next. Part of me wanted to do something centered around a school club, so that was the first piece. But then, what kind of club? I was in the kendo club for years and years, and that’s a kind of sports team, you know? But that didn’t feel right, so I started thinking about what sort of non-sports, culture-type clubs might provide interesting material, and it hit me that it might be cool to have high schoolers making movies. So the film club was the first thing we really ironed out. 
After that, I started working on what the main character of a film club manga might be like. Mao came first. Initially, I thought maybe he could pair up with another club member, but that felt wrong. So if Mao was a cameraman and not the director—that’s actually a bit of a mystery. I don’t know why I wanted him to be a cameraman and not the director—but if he’s behind the camera, it’d be cool if his love interest was someone who could be in front of the camera, an actor. A subject for Mao to film. And that’s how Hisashi came into being. I tend to develop characters in pairs so that their personalities and things balance each other, so I worked on fleshing them out.
Next, there’s always a part of me that wants my main characters to have friends, so I got to work creating the other film club members who could be Mao’s friends, like Giichi, Runa, and Teru.
It all progressed pretty quickly after that. My editor was the one who suggested we set it in an all-boys school. That’s very much what she’s like. (lol) Like, “The more boys the better! Who needs girls?!” It’s kind of mean, right? (lol)
At first, I was like, “Oh, c’mon, we need girls to squeal about our boys!” But I’m glad we went with an all-boys school in the end. Things are simpler that way. They don’t get so messy.
The dorm aspect was my idea, I think. I was like, “Let’s put them in a dorm!” I got kind of greedy.
From then on, once I’ve got my characters in place, they kind of just do their own thing and move the story along. That’s essentially how it happened.
Editor: Yes, I’ve been curious about that. You’ve mentioned in previous interviews that your characters don’t always do what you want them to do, but could you explain that in more detail? They’re your characters, right? Do they just have minds of their own? What is that like?
Jyanome: The thing is, I can’t move them around like pawns. For example, we’re talking right now, right? But I can only know the things you’ve told me. I can’t know the things we haven’t talked about yet. It’s kind of like that with my characters. There are things I know about them, and things I don’t. Like, I don’t really get it myself, but I don’t ever know their birthdays to begin with. It’s strange, since they all come from me, but I haven’t asked them when their birthdays are, so I don’t know. As I write the story, though, another character might, for example, say, “Hey, Otomo, isn’t your birthday in November?” And that’s when I finally realize, “Huh. I guess he was born in November.” I do at that point consider, like, is that what I want it to be? But then it just clicks that Hisashi does actually seem like a winter baby, so I go back to what I originally heard.
That’s sort of what it’s like. The further I follow the story, the more I get to dig deeper into each character. That’s how I learned that Mao likes to eat, that he loves snacks and karaage fried chicken. It was only after seeing him in a scene where food comes up that I realized, “Oh, Mao is kind of a glutton.”
I’m sorry, I know I’m saying something really strange, but that’s really what it’s like. I don’t know how else to put it.
For example, when they’re filming the film club movie [in volume one], things aren’t going well and Mao buys a bunch of food to cheer Hisashi up when they go off to talk together. But it wasn’t until we got there that it hit me that he’s probably doing that because he himself loves to eat. I had no way of knowing that ahead of time.
So, even if I try to sort of impose my ideas on them to fill out the things I don’t know, I can’t ask them if I got it right, and they won’t just act that way for me. It’s as if I don’t know at all. It’s only after going through lots of scenes that show me what they are really like that I can create profiles for my characters.
I’m sorry, I have trouble putting this into words, but that’s the overall feeling of it. You could call it inspiration, or you could say that I don’t think about what they’d be like in a particular situation until we actually get there, but that’s how I learn things bit by bit about my characters, how I develop relationships with them.
Editor: Please don’t apologize! I think that’s wonderful.
Jyanome: It’s so tough. I’m not trying to sound cool or anything, but that’s just how it is! (lol) Hirohiko Araki-sensei, for example, will write up profiles for all his characters at the very beginning and fill out their special attacks and things on a sheet. I tried doing it once myself, deciding my characters birthdays, their special attacks, the things they’re bad at. But then after going through all that, none of it came up in the story and I was left thinking, “Why do I need to put these shackles on myself?” I mean, I can see how it would be interesting to add those kinds of rules and make things more challenging, but it’s not like a dating app where you can exchange profiles or anything. It just doesn’t work well at all for romance stories, so I gave up. (lol)
Editor: Do you think of your characters as your own children?
Jyanome: My children… No, it’s nothing quite so specific. But, I do feel like I have different relationships with different characters. For example, Giichi I think of as sort of a friend. Someone who I could tease a bit and be like, “C’mon, Ichikawa, why are you always like this!” and get kind of frustrated with him. Hisashi Otomo, on the other hand, feels very distant. He’s not someone I could tease so easily. It really depends on the character. Mao I feel somewhat closer to, but I think if I tried to tease him he might, like, push me away a bit, so I wouldn’t necessarily try it with him.
That’s why I wouldn’t say they’re all equally my children—some feel closer, some feel more distant.
I’ve said this in another interview, but when I’m working on a series, it’s like I’m developing relationships with the people who live in the apartment next door. We’re close, but not that close. But then, once the series ends, it’s like I move away, so I have no idea what happens to those characters who are now so distant. At that point, I just have to wonder, like, “Are they doing all right? I hope they are.” That’s the way I relate to my characters.
That’s also why I think it would be very difficult for me to make anything really bad happen to them. I think I’d have to take a much more godlike stance to be able to kill them or anything. That would be like opening the door to my neighbor’s apartment and coming upon their dead bodies. It would be a huge shock. I think I’d have to prepare myself to be the kind of god that throws down thunderbolts like Zeus before I could create any characters that meet cruel ends. I don’t really know why, though. I’d like to challenge myself to try it one day.
Editor: That’s fascinating! So, does that mean you don’t know what will happen to them a few years down the road?
Jyanome: Exactly. I do think about it, though. Like, “Aw, it’d be great if Hisashi could become a professional actor in a few years,” and I think about what that story might be like. But I don’t think I’ll know for sure until I sit down and say, “Okay, let’s write this thing!” Even if I said for example, “I’ve decided you’ll be an actor, so that’s that,” I don’t know if Hisashi himself would agree. That said, I do have hopes for my characters.
Available to Read Now:
Speaking with Jyanome Part 2
The second half of this amazing conversation with Jyanome covering the author, her rich characters, and her thoughts on breaking into the world of English-language manga is available now! Read the conclusion of this in-depth interview here:
Interview: Speaking with Jyanome, Author of Twilight Out of Focus - Part 2
Jyanome in Her Own Words:
Get Your Twilight Out of Focus Box Set Today:
Twilight Out of Focus Box Set
By Jyanome
AVAILABLE NOW!
For the first time ever, volumes one through four of this cinematic series are now available in a beautiful collector's edition box set! As an added bonus, each box set comes with a special booklet featuring exclusive cover art, never-before-translated manga pages, and gorgeous full-color illustrations!
Go back to the dorm room where it all began...
Film enthusiast Mao Tsuchiya and his lone wolf roommate Hisashi Otomo make three promises:
① That Mao will never tell anyone that Hisashi is gay and has a boyfriend,
② That Hisashi will never approach Mao “in that way,” and
③ That they’ll respect each other’s “private time.”
The second-years’ ground rules should ensure a peaceful life together in their dorm, but reality is never as simple as it seems in the movies, and some things are not so easily promised…
Rated: 18+
Read a FREE chapter 1 of Twilight Out of Focus
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And don’t forget, you can still download the special Twilight Out of Focus digital wallpapers—based on the box set artwork—for your mobile device and computer by visiting the exclusive digital wallpaper page.
For a limited time only, enter for a chance to win an autographed shikishi board signed by series creator Jyanome! See the official contest page for details.